Hello internets!

My life has been changing quite a lot recently. Firstly I just got slammed with comments about wasting time and not improving all that much. It's the truth and if they used up their time to write that I believe that's because they care about me. Among those were a lot of positive messages and resourceful web links. The one that helped me the most was "Do It Now" by Steve Pavlina. There were things I already knew but the way he put them made me look at them differently and actually apply a few. I changed several things about the way I work, including the area in my house where I do so. I'll probably write about those changes too, if they prove to be really positive.

There were also comments about the flash gallery I used in my website. Luckily Rui Martins, known in the internet as rmsm was already helping me to create a new one. He did most of the technical part and I truly owe him one.

Some people suggested I get in touch with a team so that I have direct feedback and, most importantly, deadlines. I started looking for a mod and right now I am waiting for a team to tell me if they're interested in what I can do. I am also working on my submission for the G-Switch art competition at Gamedev-PT and just finished getting references for my next model.

There are some new projects in the works but I'll only write about those when they're ready to be announced.

Lowpoly Littlebigplanet

After all this, I forgot to post it here.

This is my mockup of how LittleBigPlanet could look like if it was on a portable console like the PSP. That would make me buy one.


Total triangle count for the scene is 3172 and I used 4 point lights.

The only thing I added to the Maya screengrabs is the gradient frame in each picture.

...and don't forget to come to inérciaDemoparty 2008!

I am pleased to announce that inérciaDemoparty is back and its recent edition starts today! And it will be the first time I have something up my sleeve. I'll be entering in at least two compos, one being the demo one (finally!). More info here.

I'll tell you all when I get back.

lowpoly sackboy

After a while without posting models, here is the last one. It's my version of Sackboy, the main character in MediaMolecule's first game, "LittleBigPlanet". The way it's made makes it easy to just drop a texture underneath the stitches and AO and it works with just some minor tweaks.




Edit: As a fellow polycounter suggested, here are some screenshots with lights and some poses.

London Game Career Fair '08

Hey dudes and dudettes.

It's that time of the year again! Last year I got to be at the London Game Career Fair, talking to several people from some awesome companies, i gave them business cards and portfolio CDs. First time I left the country alone and first time in London. This time I have better things to show. If you want to know more about the event, here's the official link.

How did I get the money to go there?

Well, let me show you what I was doing one year ago:

Which one am I?

That's right, you just know it from the bottom of the heart.

We have lift-off!

After some weird experiments involving html, xml and a weird ftp method, I bring you my website! It is basically an online portfolio that will be constantly updated.

I will try to improve it so it's a bit more functional, but right now it's enough. It only needs better art and that's what I am doing right now. I'll show it when I can.

ZApplink for lowpoly

I recently finished another model for my portfolio and while trying out some things I came up with something that helped me a lot and some of you guys might not know yet. It's not groundbreaking but it helped me to speed along the texturing part smoothly.

As some of you may know Zbrush has a plugin that allows you to project textures directly on your model (as long as you have layed out the UVs beforehand) and that is done using ZAppLink, which connects Zbrush to your image editing program of choice. Mine is Photoshop.

I was trying to use it to texture a fairly lowpoly model of a head (250 tris) but it was giving me some awful results that looked like a shattered mirror instead of a projected picture. It can give you a faint hint at some things but overall it is not that useful. That is because of the model's polygon density. What can you do when you get to this point? Logically you can subdivide your model until it has enough density, but what about ZBrush's pet hate of triangles and vertices with more than one edge connected to it?

Turn this...

Apparently the problem only rises if you want to change your geometry afterwards. In some cases it wrecks your model and that's why if you want to use Zbrush to actually sculpt it's mandatory that it's all in quads. This means you can bend one of Zbrush's main rules: "No triangles, just quads!" to your advantage.

...into this!

So subdivide your model until you have enough density (35.000 tris was more than enough on this case). Some of your model's definition will be lost because smoothing causes it to be a lot more rounded.You don't even have to save your subdivided, unaltered model. After all, the model you're texturing is the one you already had in the first place.

Of course there's a lot of work to do in Photoshop after this is done but hopefully it helps those who find it hard to start texturing. I used about six main projections and a couple of small ones for the whole head.

Good texturing!

(The reference pictures come from 3d.sk)

"Where does the newborn go from here?"

Alright, I'll come clean: I'm not sure what path to take with this blog right now.

It started it with a goal that changed when I went to London. Then I used it to write about the course's progress so that everyone interested could simply come here and read about it. At the same time I wrote some of my thoughts about videogames and their future. I usually upload a picture with the post so that it's not that dry and devoid of interest for those who read it and don't really care about videogames.

Right now I'm back to Portugal, making portfolio pieces and improving a lot of models I had started but not finished. Getting ready for the next steps. Most of the people who came here to see if I was alright have already talked to me in person and are in a more constant contact now so I believe they stopped reading this.

So the question is for the rest of you:

What do you want to read about when you visit this blog?

week 3

(real-life pixelart in Manhattan)

I am aware I didn't show the second week's progress and the reason is I decided to remake the model and I have been doing it in my short free time since then.

This week was different from the last. If I said last week was intensive, this one was insane. First day was a bank holiday, second one was a day full of theory about a lot of things and a briefing for the next three days.

The goal was to make one or two items that could be in a Prince of Persia game, mostly Sands of Time. We had a list of about twenty differend objects we could do. I am also here to train myself to work under strict timelines, so I chose to make three objects. I am proud of what I have achieved.

The images in the next post represent those three days. (This is so I can have a separate tag for "Gallery" for clarity's sake)

Last-gen/Next-gen?

(Squirrel in Shepherd's Bush Green)

This week was intense. It made me rethink a lot of things I had taken tor granted in 3D and it made me work until late in the evening once again. I learned a lot about Ps2/Gamecube style graphics, about techniques like vertex lighting, tiling textures, UVs, poly counts, planar continuity, normals...I could just go on and on.

It was frustrating. I was really proud of everything in my model but as I got close to the end I understood how vertex lighting worked and had to redo most of it. I didn't finish in time. It's not a strict thing but it was a deadline I really intended to meet. It's another thing I wanted to improve. The teacher was really proud I didn't give up or restart the model and says I should finish it in my free time. I agree, it's too much to throw away.

Today I found out our class is visiting Blitz Games in two weeks. They asked us to bring the things we have been doing in the course and offered to ask our questions and show us their workspace.

In other news Vlad's daughter was born three days ago! Hooray for him!

Meet the set

I was challenged to make TF2-style textures (diffuse, specular, normals) for my small set and this is how far I got during the time Escape was open today. I wanted to remake them all but wasn't fast enough to remake them with TF2 style and quality. Still I worked a lot faster than a week ago and a lot of people recognized the colors instantly.

The light is the one I had yesterday without any changes. It has nothing to do with the style of the game though.

Maya, Photoshop, Gamebryo

It's hard to describe what I'm feeling today. This day is being a great one so far, and one I'll not soon forget. Today I created textures, speculars, alpha and normal maps really quickly and in the end exported the models into Gamebryo and walked around in it as if it was a videogame for the first time. If you don't know much about cg graphics or game engines this might not sound impressive but it was an important moment for me. It's the end of the first week and I feel like I've learned so much it's "Unreal". Sorry for the really bad pun, I just had to do it.

The image above is a simple screencap from Maya without depth map shadows and the set was made with these pieces.

Chapter 3

I am writing this on the end of the second day of the course. Why is that? Because yesterday I stayed up for hours redoing what we did earlier. I did a Half-Life 2-looking set with the essencial props (models and UVs). That's right, wall, door, ground, crates and barrels. Twice. Long but rewarding first day.

It was the first time I felt comfortable with UV mapping. Finally.

Today was texture day. We only did the texture for the barrels but tomorrow we'll do the spec and at least try to do the rest of the set. I learned a lot new tricks in Photoshop. We were so interested in it that neither the teacher or us realized it was an hour past exit time already.

The class is full and this time I'm the only portuguese. The guy who came from furthest away is australian. The rest is one cool guy I knew from Core, some Sony fanboys and a guy who wants to work in architectural visualization (yeah, weird - but I actually think the future of architectural visualization will shift from static pre-rendered images to real-time "visits" to the buildings in game engines though).

On related news, seven of the previous Games Escapees passed the first test to get into Rare today. This doesn't mean they will end in there for sure, but it's definitely a good sign.

Wobsite

Sorting out my priorities once again. What do I really need? Work done, to show and to practice. I also need a website in that I can direct people to, somewhere where they can see what I can do.

So I set off for the cheapest and quickest way to get a website online. Checked out several things like hosts and Joomla! but Vlad said in my case Flash makes more sense and he's right. It's not the best thing for a site like this, but it is a program I already feel familiar with. I basically just need a clean wall where I can hang the best things I have done and will continue to do. Better to start now so I have it done and polished when I need it the most.

Flash it is then.

The real deal

Warning: This post is way too long.

It is being written as a load off my shoulders, not as an apology to someone. I feel I have been overconfident and underproductive with my time over the last few years.

From about six or seven years I have felt my free time was something I could and should use in order to develop work or skills that would help me later on. That would give me an advantage over people who didn't do the same, at least.
Those areas I covered depended on the areas of interest I had at the time, like Flash, Photoshop, comic-book scripting and drawing and in about three years ago it switched to several aspects of videogame creation.

As I started getting into several online forums I started to get invited to several projects. A while ago I had several at the same time, juggling with the personal projects I still had. Most projects weren't finished mostly because the person who was directing them called it off, because someone wasn't working enough or taking it seriously. I felt that person wasn't me and I still believe it wasn't.

A while ago I quit my course to get better in creating graphic assets for videogames in order to start working in the videogame industry. I started using my free time to get acquainted to Maya again. to learn new things as a warm-up exercise. It worked.

During the course I had some projects I was helping and other spontaneous helps that worked well but two of those projects were a bit left behind. They were finished but I felt they could have gone a whole lot better.

I was invited to work in something I was proud to be working as I was studying. I would do things in my place and send them over the web. I knew the Games course would start relatively soon and I would have to juggle both things but I was so glad was invited to do that I said yes, while thinking "This is a bit suicidal but it will be an awesome thing if it goes well".

A bit later I came back to Portugal and I thought I would have a lot of time to work in it. So much that I could focus a bit more on the upcoming course when it started, actually. I immediately started to get invitations to go here and there, see everyone again and that's where this came from.

I tried to do both things and after a while I was disappointing the other people in the team because I wasn't delivering my work on time or with enough quality. That was shown to me and I was asked if I thought it made sense to continue having a part in that. I agreed it doesn't, especially because the course is coming very soon.

Why didn't I do everything I was supposed to? Honestly. I slept too much and when I worked on it I would stay up for too long, creating a loop and I accepted too many invites of friends, cutting my time short. I started creating a new lowpoly model to gain a bit more experience with 3D and spent some time reading and researching about game engines and graphic technology. I didn't take it seriously enough.

I disappointed friends and workmates and probably they won't trust me with a similar thing again. I was helping them in a videogame. It would have my name on it when it got published. I spent time reading about making games and training for it instead of actually doing that in the real deal, the game. It's so clear now and it's so embarassing.

They were too kind to explain all that to me and I feel like I have learned a valuable lesson, though it cost me trust and future oportunities. I feel ashamed of myself. From now on I feel I will rethink my priorities in order to achieve what I want for myself.

Thank you for reading this. It was too long, wasn't it?

Attempts on letting the toasters fly on the web

Here are two of the many attempts on putting my video on a website in order to be able to show it to everyone who wants it. The gamma is messed up so the contrast is overblown. I'll fix that once I get my hands on Shake again.

It is also a test to see if embedding videos is as easy as they say.

....and on Vimeo.

P.S: It is!

Engines

I have been spending a fair bit of time planning one of my next steps in terms of training for videogame models. Something I noticed in the forums I participate in or just occasionaly lurk, most people don't try to make models for integration in specific engines or games. I am not saying it is essencial but I face it as a nice way to train things like poly limits, texture resolution limitations and the most rewarding part...including them in the game and playing with them/blowing them up!

I found Unreal Tournament 3 Limited Edition in London for 20£ but it is a bit too much for my PC in terms of hardware so I am downscaling. Right now I am looking at Source Engine (Half-life 2, Counter-Strike Source), Unreal Engine 2 (Unreal Tournament 2004) and Gamebryo (Oblivion, Fallout 3).

Hopefully I'll create some models I'll be able to integrate in the engine I choose and go a bit further in my training.

Family's reactions to this

A while ago I was wondering wether I should quit the degree I was taking or just bear with it and put my dreams on a shelf. As you can see I chose my dreams over a diploma. This may sound romantic and it actually is, but there's a downside to it and that is having to tell the same story over and over again, mainly to friends and family.

This happens all the time with almost everything I do but this time it's a bit more serious. Decisions like these shape the rest of my life, they close some doors and open others. Some make sense and others don't. Some seem they don't make much sense and a while later they do, like working as a mascot, dressed like a big orange seahorse near the beach.

Most of the times after telling the same story a few times I lose the love of telling it, I change my mind but tell it the same way, realizing I don't feel the same about it. I try not to make it too obvious though. The people who know me better have noticed I changed the way I talked about that degree, the most attentive ones know I stopped talking about it in the same way after I spent a while there. Part of my family was happy knowing I was taking a degree and studying near the place they were born and I didn't want to disappoint them.

They had no idea about my main interests. I don't talk that openly to them because most of the time I would be talking about topics they know nothing about. This has been going on for years now. This Christmas I only asked for money to help paying the London course. Now they know it's real. They agreed and instead of getting a book, videogame or DVD I got an envelope. Well, four envelopes by now.

Most of them are afraid everything might go wrong but they support me still. It's great and I like repeating stories about this new path over and over again. Sorry about it. I am not losing any enthusiasm right now. I take it as a really good thing.

Challenges

What do you need to get out of the couch? I could bet a good challenge would do it.

In my opinion they are the best way to learn and if it works for me, it probably works for anyone. I will state this as a biographical note but it's only an example. If you understand this you'll probably ignore the biographical part. If you understood the first sentence you'll probably won't need to read the whole post.

First challenge: Learn Art, Make art

The second or third time I got interested in game development was the time I decided to register myself in a portuguese game development forum, GameDev-PT. Quickly I came to the conclusion I had to contribute to the community. In short, how could I be seen as an artist if I had almost no pieces to show?

Second Challenge: Be useful to a team

When I started reading posts I found a guy recruiting every kind of game developer to be on his team to make a groudbreaking massive online game (for gamers, MMORPG with a FPS interface). I contacted him and quickly I was on the team. Now I only had to make a difference there. Initially I was the only one so it wasn't much of a challenge. Despite that, I created a schedule for me. One A4 page filled with concept sketches a day. I had classes at the same time so it seemed reasonable.

The project eventually crumbled but I learned a few things and I mastered new tools. I met people related to that area and I came one step further to achieving my dream.

Third challenge: Figuring out what to do next

After that I had no team and no project, so I created my own. With that I kept learning by myself until I was in a team again and after that I got back to my projects, learning so that I can be even more useful next time.


In a nutshell, I dare you to learn and to make something you're proud of.

Sincerity

In the past years I spent a bit of time in online forums. Those were enough to give me an idea of how they work and let me tell you this: it's rare to find an extremely sincere person and those guys have the most valuable opinions.

You will probably hate your first encounters with these guys because they are the ones who have the guts to tell you which parts of the works you show are wrong. They are the ones who notice the parts that could be better and point them out. They are likely to have a whole lot more experience than you and they know of the importance of their sincerity. If you understand what they have to say you'll get better quicker. Trust me.

Good comments made by friends feel awesome but they are not neutral comments because those people want to see you happy and they will always say it looks great. If you can take all these comments in a constructive way you'll grow to a point where you'll be sincere and people will hear you roar. And you'll be right.